Cubas' status as a world leader in medicine is actually debatable, not laughable.
Yes, they can't compete on level terms with the West
Make up your mind, would you?
I was mainly laughing at his suggestion that the socialist utopia had a superiors approach to medical research. The only reason they fund the visible arm of their medicine as well as they do is because it generates money from foreigners looking to be healed, and it makes for good propaganda. Do you seriously think that the average Cuban sees any benefit from this research? If you're a poor Cuban, you'd be better off trying to find medical aid in Zimbabwe.
Common misconception based on the fact that government acquisitions, and especially military acquisitions, usually involve an extended support and warranty contract. People repeat this nonsense all the time, without having even the slightest understanding of how government purchasing works. Also, the crazy Jewish guy in "Independence Day" didn't help much with his "You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?" quote.
Consider for a minute that an even larger percentage of the EU beleives in things like Homeopathy, and "the healing touch".
Right. Religion is only one brand of nonsense. Before they start acting snobbish and turning Turkey away, they may wish to clean up their own house first.
Right, now you're just off on an anti-US rant, and those never have any sort of logic, nor a reasonable conclusion. Plus it's 100% irrelevant to the original topic. We're done here.
Certainly not that local garage. Most garages must be specialized in order to do certain repairs on those types of cars because of the variability and complexity on diagnosing and actually fixing them.
Nonsense. I do most of my own maintenance and repair work. Stuff that I can't handle, my mechanic can. I'm not sure where this "complexity" myth comes from. Not to mention that an electric vehicle would actually be LESS complex, and require less maintenance.
If you smash your hybrid electric thingy ma bob, it's going to cost you a lot more to fix the car then a traditional one, given the scarcity of the products and the technical skill and tools needed to fix them.
Who cares? If you smash it, it's the insurance company that pays for the repairs. At worst you may end up with a slight increase in insurance rates. Moreover, any accident requiring extensive internal repairs will probably be a write-off anyway, and cars which only require cosmetic repairs aren't going to be any harder to fix than they currently are.
Also, you're sales pitch completely goes against what car manufacturers want. Cars have become dispensable. You smash it, and buy another. 20 year maintenance? They don't want people driving for 20 years with the same car. They want you to buy a new one A.S.A.P
So offer better deals on leases instead. Or limit the warranty to 6 years instead of 20. Whatever. The point is, there's dozens of different ways you can make money off a product, and only a buffon would believe that car companies are suppressing new technology because they're afraid that they may have to change their business model.
Do you know how complicated it would be to develop this model?
Give me $100,000, 2 months, and a staff of 3. I'll spend a month partying in Cuba, a week recovering, and have a workable business model on your desk before the 2 months is up.
Do you understand capital acquisitions and depreciation and ROI? How is he wrong?
Most of the machinery would be usable for the new vehicles. Much bigger changes in tooling have had to be made in the past, when transitioning to the use of new materials such as fibreglass, titanium, and carbon fibre, yet companies did it willingly. So he's wrong in his assumption that this would require a major retooling, and he's wrong in his assumption that companies aren't willing to retool when necessary.
No, they should get a job, buy an appartment, and get on with their lives.
They almost were and now you want to quibble about some seeking justice?
I don't see how insisting that the government pay you to be a drunken, belligerent, uneducated idiot qualifies as "justice".
Tell that to those in Bosnia and Iraq who have to live with DU, Depleted Unranium.
Sheer nonsense. The radioactivity in these zones is no worse than average. The word "depleted" in "depleted uranium" should tell you something, yet I keep hearing these clueless claims all the time, mostly from tree-hugging hippies and people who have no clue what they're talking about nor any sort of qualifications to back up their assertions. In fact, the biggest problem with DU use for munitions is the possibility of deaths through metal poisoning, not radiation. That's the same risk you run when using lead or tungsten projectiles. And you're going even further off-topic now. I don't see what DU has to do with anything I've said.
No, there is something much more effective. It's called High Barrier to Entry, and it is extremely effective at keeping out small car manufacturers, with expensive safety tests and regulation compliance
There's also foreign companies, some of which are government backed. Let me guess, all other countries are in on the conspiracy too, right?
The way to make money in the car business (like any other) is to make sales. In GMs case they do this through a dealership network. The dealership network makes almost no profit from the initial sale of the car, and nearly all of the profit through service and maintenance, in which they sell small products at ridiculous markups. When GM trialled the EV1, the dealerships realised that an electric motor has very little maintenance costs, and so there was no profit in selling them.
The reason they do this is because upfBzzzt, wrong, but thankyou for playing.ront costs are easier for the customer to understand, however, it also leads to losing some profits because of intelligent customers who buy after-market parts instead. If an electric vehicle really cost so much less to maintain, it'd be VERY easy to market - simply jack up your sticker price, but offer free maintenance for the next 2 decades. Customers LOVE to see the word FREE, and FREE FOR THE NEXT 20 YEARS! looks even better. Show your customers a price chart of how much it would cost them to maintain a vehicle bought from your competitor, vs the money they'd be saving by buying from you. While you're at it, have some charts handy depicting the projected growth curve of fossil fuels over the next 20 years, vs the relatively low cost of grid electrical energy. It's not hard to develop a workable business model around a vehicle which has low maintenance costs, and you'd make a killing in the long run.
If you radically change your manufacturing process to produce a better car, you lose your investment in the current equipment
I don't know where you're getting that idea, but it's wrong.
Bzzzt, wrong, but thankyou for playing.
Your arrogance would be amusing, if it weren't so horribly misplaced.
Sorry, I don't have any sympathy for aboriginals. Their claims to land here in my area have caused nothing but problems, and are spurious to begin with. The government maintains the right of eminent domain, meaning they can seize your property and reimburse you, regardless of your desires, if they determine that such an action is necessary. You can argue about whether it's right or wrong all you want, but it's a fact of life, and it's not going to change. As for the health effects of the mining, they're bad in African nations because nobody there cares about the health of the workers, but in modern nations all reasonable safety precautions are taken. We can't control what goes on in Africa without invading them, so I don't see what you expect us to do about it. Not that it's relevant anyway, since we weren't discussing africa to begin with.
I'm just amazed by how many of your complaints are totally invalid. I don't think you've made a single solid point so far. And since I'm bored, I'll take the time to Fisk you.
*Not doing jack shit to stop Osama bin Laden before 9/11.
This is such a ridiculous attack that it shouldn't even NEED answering. Unfortunately people like you don't seem to realize that. Take a minute to think about how long Bush was in office before 9/11. Also consider the fact that he got elected based on his domestic reform platform, and not foreign relations or internal security. Finally, consider Clinton's (lack of) response to previous Al Qaeda attacks, and think about how long HE was in office before these attacks.
*Letting Osama get away in Afghanistan.
Yes, I'm sure Bush was personally on the ground, had Osama cornered, and then said, "aw, what the hell, you can go".
*Invading Iraq on false pretenses and blowing our credibility.
More nonsense. There were no "false pretences". This is historical revisionism of the highest order.
*Letting looting go unchecked in Baghdad, blowing our credibility with the Iraqis.
This sentence is a non-sequitor. Even if it weren't a logical fallacy, it'd still be an invalid criticism, since you're assuming that using the military to stop looting would have worked out better. More than likely it would just have ended with lots of dead Iraqi looters, and accusations that the Americans were just trying to steal the property for themselves.
*Letting an insurgency develop in Iraq, turning it into a giant terrorist training ground.
Invalid, since you assume this could have somehow been prevented. Unfortunately, when Clinton left office, he forgot to hand over his magic wand to Bush.
*Firing the entire Iraqi Army and locking the Baathists out of power, which fueled the insurgency.
This *might* be a valid criticism, if you had any way to show that NOT firing the army would have worked out better. It's really a judgement call. Most Int analysts agree that the Saddam era army was too corrupt to ever be reformed. Second guessing the presidents decisions without any evidence is pointless.
*Letting U.S. soldiers engage in torture in Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan, blowing our credibility on human rights
Stupidest thing I've heard from you yet, and I won't even bother with a civilized response. If you're willing to believe this, you're pretty much a lost cause anyway.
*Neglecting the rebuilding of Afghanistan, allowing the Taliban to come back.
Afghanistan's being rebuilt, and the Taliban was going to return no matter what. You naively assume that once a tyrannical regime in the middle east is "properly" defeated, they'll simply disappear. All our experiences show us otherwise - from Israel in Palestine and Lebanon, to NATO in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know for a fact that any time we defeat a middle eastern muslim nation's tyrants, they, and others like them, are going to return in the form of an insurgency. It's intellectually dishonest to suggest that Bush should have somehow stopped this.
*Letting North Korea go from a company which may or may not have had a nuclear program, to one that has the bomb.
North Korea's not a company, it's a country. We also don't know if they have a workable nuke yet. And North Korea's continued aggression is a result of several decades of international policies. Why the hell are we giving them aid and funding, when they just turn around and put that money and food towards feeding and equipping their military? If NK had been placed under sanctions a few decades back, their threat today would be non-existent. Instead people like you insist that we pander to them, and "negotiate" with
That's just ignorant. Northern Ireland doesn't exactly have a lot of support from other nations. You don't see the French funding the IRA, or the Belgians sending terrorists to fight alongside them.
Conformity through anti-conformity or what have you. Leftists (I can't call them Liberals because that would mean free thinking people) are some of the most close minded, anti-freespeech people I have ever had an occasion to converse with.
And in a burst of irony, 2 out of 3 responders, and several mods, decide to prove you right. Ah well. I'm still with you. There's plenty of intolerance on the right, too, but it doesn't hold a candle to the sheer mindless hatred on the left.
Whatever decent advancement is made, nothing can compare to raw experience. Some helpful things like the cooling blood would be nice or an enhanced exoskeleton, but outside of the specialized units these wouldn't be practical or cost effective.
20 years ago, people would have said the same thing about body armour. it's nonsense. these glove-contraptions seem relatively simple, and should be much cheaper than all the kevlar we've been tossing at our soldiers. not to mention the fact that the US mil has been looking into ways of cooling down it's soldiers for quite a while now, and has even developed an extremely complex vehicle mounted system. these gloves, if they work, would be a hundred times cheaper, and infinitely more useful.
There's no such thing as "Evolutionism", and I, for one, resent your attempt to equate science to religion. Your inability to comprehend the theory evolution in no way discredits the science behind it.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The worlds largest enclosed space is a Boing factory. The VAB is 129 million cubic feet, while the Boing plant is 200 million.
Says a lot. "better people" -- are you saying that military people are better than civilians? That's funny because constitutionally, the military is subserviant to civilian rule
Yes, I, as a man who offers his life for his nation, am subservient to the drunken bum sleeping in a puddle of his own feeces, and the college student who wants to turn my nation into a Communist Dream (tm). Just because they have power over me, doesn't mean that they're in any way better than I am. We GIVE you power over us precisely because we wish to REMAIN better men - we have no desire to turn into power-hungry tyrants ruling over a military dictatorship. Just don't for a minute imagine that these allocations of power somehow make YOU superior.
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Congratulations, you just proved my point.
Next time you run into one of these "convincing dowsers" or miracle healers, tell 'em to head on over and claim James Randi's $1 million prize.
I was mainly laughing at his suggestion that the socialist utopia had a superiors approach to medical research. The only reason they fund the visible arm of their medicine as well as they do is because it generates money from foreigners looking to be healed, and it makes for good propaganda. Do you seriously think that the average Cuban sees any benefit from this research? If you're a poor Cuban, you'd be better off trying to find medical aid in Zimbabwe.
oh....my...*snort*....God....
Thanks a lot you bastard. Now who's gonna clean all this Coke off of my monitor??
Seriously, up to that point I was actually considering some of what you had to say...but WOW. You're a right nutter, eh?
Common misconception based on the fact that government acquisitions, and especially military acquisitions, usually involve an extended support and warranty contract. People repeat this nonsense all the time, without having even the slightest understanding of how government purchasing works. Also, the crazy Jewish guy in "Independence Day" didn't help much with his "You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?" quote.
Consider for a minute that an even larger percentage of the EU beleives in things like Homeopathy, and "the healing touch".
Right. Religion is only one brand of nonsense. Before they start acting snobbish and turning Turkey away, they may wish to clean up their own house first.
Right, now you're just off on an anti-US rant, and those never have any sort of logic, nor a reasonable conclusion. Plus it's 100% irrelevant to the original topic. We're done here.
Who cares? If you smash it, it's the insurance company that pays for the repairs. At worst you may end up with a slight increase in insurance rates. Moreover, any accident requiring extensive internal repairs will probably be a write-off anyway, and cars which only require cosmetic repairs aren't going to be any harder to fix than they currently are.
So offer better deals on leases instead. Or limit the warranty to 6 years instead of 20. Whatever. The point is, there's dozens of different ways you can make money off a product, and only a buffon would believe that car companies are suppressing new technology because they're afraid that they may have to change their business model.
Give me $100,000, 2 months, and a staff of 3. I'll spend a month partying in Cuba, a week recovering, and have a workable business model on your desk before the 2 months is up.
Most of the machinery would be usable for the new vehicles. Much bigger changes in tooling have had to be made in the past, when transitioning to the use of new materials such as fibreglass, titanium, and carbon fibre, yet companies did it willingly. So he's wrong in his assumption that this would require a major retooling, and he's wrong in his assumption that companies aren't willing to retool when necessary.
I don't see how insisting that the government pay you to be a drunken, belligerent, uneducated idiot qualifies as "justice".
Sheer nonsense. The radioactivity in these zones is no worse than average. The word "depleted" in "depleted uranium" should tell you something, yet I keep hearing these clueless claims all the time, mostly from tree-hugging hippies and people who have no clue what they're talking about nor any sort of qualifications to back up their assertions. In fact, the biggest problem with DU use for munitions is the possibility of deaths through metal poisoning, not radiation. That's the same risk you run when using lead or tungsten projectiles. And you're going even further off-topic now. I don't see what DU has to do with anything I've said.
There's also foreign companies, some of which are government backed. Let me guess, all other countries are in on the conspiracy too, right?
The reason they do this is because upfBzzzt, wrong, but thankyou for playing.ront costs are easier for the customer to understand, however, it also leads to losing some profits because of intelligent customers who buy after-market parts instead. If an electric vehicle really cost so much less to maintain, it'd be VERY easy to market - simply jack up your sticker price, but offer free maintenance for the next 2 decades. Customers LOVE to see the word FREE, and FREE FOR THE NEXT 20 YEARS! looks even better. Show your customers a price chart of how much it would cost them to maintain a vehicle bought from your competitor, vs the money they'd be saving by buying from you. While you're at it, have some charts handy depicting the projected growth curve of fossil fuels over the next 20 years, vs the relatively low cost of grid electrical energy. It's not hard to develop a workable business model around a vehicle which has low maintenance costs, and you'd make a killing in the long run.
I don't know where you're getting that idea, but it's wrong.
Your arrogance would be amusing, if it weren't so horribly misplaced.
"or something"? That's awfully open-ended. You're right, though, there's only 6.5 billion people on this planet who are "or something".
Sure they did.
Sorry, I don't have any sympathy for aboriginals. Their claims to land here in my area have caused nothing but problems, and are spurious to begin with. The government maintains the right of eminent domain, meaning they can seize your property and reimburse you, regardless of your desires, if they determine that such an action is necessary. You can argue about whether it's right or wrong all you want, but it's a fact of life, and it's not going to change. As for the health effects of the mining, they're bad in African nations because nobody there cares about the health of the workers, but in modern nations all reasonable safety precautions are taken. We can't control what goes on in Africa without invading them, so I don't see what you expect us to do about it. Not that it's relevant anyway, since we weren't discussing africa to begin with.
This is such a ridiculous attack that it shouldn't even NEED answering. Unfortunately people like you don't seem to realize that. Take a minute to think about how long Bush was in office before 9/11. Also consider the fact that he got elected based on his domestic reform platform, and not foreign relations or internal security. Finally, consider Clinton's (lack of) response to previous Al Qaeda attacks, and think about how long HE was in office before these attacks.
Yes, I'm sure Bush was personally on the ground, had Osama cornered, and then said, "aw, what the hell, you can go".
More nonsense. There were no "false pretences". This is historical revisionism of the highest order.
This sentence is a non-sequitor. Even if it weren't a logical fallacy, it'd still be an invalid criticism, since you're assuming that using the military to stop looting would have worked out better. More than likely it would just have ended with lots of dead Iraqi looters, and accusations that the Americans were just trying to steal the property for themselves.
Invalid, since you assume this could have somehow been prevented. Unfortunately, when Clinton left office, he forgot to hand over his magic wand to Bush.
This *might* be a valid criticism, if you had any way to show that NOT firing the army would have worked out better. It's really a judgement call. Most Int analysts agree that the Saddam era army was too corrupt to ever be reformed. Second guessing the presidents decisions without any evidence is pointless.
Stupidest thing I've heard from you yet, and I won't even bother with a civilized response. If you're willing to believe this, you're pretty much a lost cause anyway.
Afghanistan's being rebuilt, and the Taliban was going to return no matter what. You naively assume that once a tyrannical regime in the middle east is "properly" defeated, they'll simply disappear. All our experiences show us otherwise - from Israel in Palestine and Lebanon, to NATO in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know for a fact that any time we defeat a middle eastern muslim nation's tyrants, they, and others like them, are going to return in the form of an insurgency. It's intellectually dishonest to suggest that Bush should have somehow stopped this.
North Korea's not a company, it's a country. We also don't know if they have a workable nuke yet. And North Korea's continued aggression is a result of several decades of international policies. Why the hell are we giving them aid and funding, when they just turn around and put that money and food towards feeding and equipping their military? If NK had been placed under sanctions a few decades back, their threat today would be non-existent. Instead people like you insist that we pander to them, and "negotiate" with
That's just ignorant. Northern Ireland doesn't exactly have a lot of support from other nations. You don't see the French funding the IRA, or the Belgians sending terrorists to fight alongside them.
Can you point to any country that's better at it? Except maybe Israel?
Why doesn't it occur to you that intelligence and education may be two separate things?
Oh yeah, I know why: because while being educated, you lack intelligence.
simple solution: stop watching TV and start talking to the soldiers.
A simple "whoops!" would have been sufficient.
There's no such thing as "Evolutionism", and I, for one, resent your attempt to equate science to religion. Your inability to comprehend the theory evolution in no way discredits the science behind it.
Sorry, but you're wrong. The worlds largest enclosed space is a Boing factory. The VAB is 129 million cubic feet, while the Boing plant is 200 million.
You must have missed the rest of the conversation. We were discussing hydrogen powered vehicles.
Time to take your meds again Ron!